Various mechanisms exist for protecting data from malware, viruses and data loss. Typical virus and malware scanners run in the background to identify malicious code in individual files. Other systems scan files as they are uploaded, downloaded or transferred onto a protected system or sent/received in an e-mail. Some scanners are scheduled to run at specific intervals. Some scanners may be launched to run immediately, or at a delayed time. Other systems are designed to protect data from being released to third parties or being removed from a secure facility or storage area, often due to confidentiality. However, this type of data “loss” is conceptually different from protecting a user's data from permanent loss in the sense of corruption, deletion, or broken director)/links, etc. Recently, malicious third parties have been hijacking user's data by encrypting or locking it and requesting payment to unlock the data for use, also known as ransomware.
However, existing systems fail to anticipate and block all types of data loss and allow for adequate recovery. Also, many malware scanners are designed to scan individual files on a user device rather than operate in one or more user data storage areas in a cloud storage system/device. Existing systems are typically reactive rather than proactive when it comes to monitoring of data files.